Three dozen eggs

Suhoor is nice.

For any reader who doesn't know, suhoor is the meal Muslims try to eat before beginning the day of fasting. The fast starts at "dawn," an hour and a half or so before the sun comes up in the morning, so Muslim try to eat something before then.

My roommate and I are partial to eggs.

I won't go into a tirade about why I love eggs, just suffice to say that they are very "nutrient dense" (meaning that relative to the number of calories, they have lots of nutritious) and especially a lot of protein. And if you're thinking "cholesterol?" then you've probably missed the more updated view that dietary cholesterol (that is cholesterol you eat) has hardly any effect on the amount of cholesterol in your body that your doctor keeps measuring.

So they're very nutritious. And when you're fasting, eating less food than normal, it's extra important to get all the nutrition, right? And Allah swt takes care of us. In addition to being nutritious, eggs taste good, they're cheap, and they're easy to cook. You can cook them several different ways, all in just a few minutes (so you don't have to get up super early for suhoor too cook a lot). We like boiled eggs, scrambled eggs (sometimes with cheese), fried eggs (ok, so my roommie doesn't like fried eggs) and omelets. Then you can get really adventurous (takes a bit more time) and go for egg salad and deviled eggs.

Anyway, last year we ate eggs pretty regularly and it's the same this year. It turns out though that I just ran out of eggs as Ramadan started. I mooched off roommie for one day (we share things often even though we typically buy stuff for ourselves) and before going to taraweeh that night I stopped by the grocery store and bought two dozen eggs to make sure we'd have enough to last a while without running out or having to worry about it again any time soon. Well, after taraweeh my roommate decided to stop by the grocery store (she didn't know, at the time, that I'd already bought some) and get some too!! So now, lol, we have three dozen eggs in the fridge.

InshaaAllah we'll get around to eating them soon. Now eggs aren't the only thing we eat. I alternate it with toast, oatmeal, grits (oh come on, I do live in the south after all, but they take longer to cook), cereal (raisin+ bran... extra raisins and granola!) and usually have either an orange or orange(+mix) juice. Dee-lish.

Yeah, just like Amy to talk about food in Ramadan.

Although this is worth saying... last year I lost about 10 pounds in Ramadan. I had 10 pounds to lose easily sure, but that's considerable for just 1 month. Most people I know gain weight in Ramadan, they eat a lot after breaking the fast, I think. I can't figure that one out, after a day of fasting, yeah I wanna eat... well mostly I want to drink water. But stuffing my face with rice and pasta really just makes me feel sick. But especially if I'm going to go to taraweeh... I remember last year my stomach seemed to "shrink" throughout the month so by the end... a small plate was enough, honestly. And alhamdulillah, the hunger is useful. Being full makes it harder to stay awake, harder to concentrate... and hey check out Br. Naeem's advice for Ramadan: don't overeat!

The other night I was eating at someone's house and (ok I should know better by now!) she fixed my plate for me. Partially. She spooned onto my plate from a few dishes... and that was tough. I hate to leave food on the plate, I feel like it's kind of an insult or something, but soo much food (much of it pasta).

I started this post though to talk about how nice suhoor is. I'm not talking about eating at 5am, but I'm getting to spend some quality time with my roommate. We don't eat together that often honestly, but being up at this time, it's not like there's anything much else to do, and it's not like we can go out somewhere to be distracted. So just me and her time, and it's really nice.

There are some activities at the masjid after fajr now, daily, but I'm not sure if I want to start going again. It tends to be stuffy in the masjid for fajr prayers (like they turn of the a/c once people leave) which would be almost tolerable except for the partition which limits any real circulation of air from the main portion of the musallah, compounded by extra sisters showing up to pray. I'm trying hard now to get on a better and more solid schedule, starting with worship in the morning and ending with worship at night, instead of lots of extra sleeping and then homework. I do have a lot of homework, and when I look at the stack of books I need to read by Monday, and I look at the Qur'an... I just feel really sad, and wish I were reading more Qur'an. This is Ramadan! I have better things to do than read 200 pages about the Korean War. :-(

So scheduling is important. Later today inshaaAllah I'm hoping to go to the imam's class on fiqh and tafseer. (It's 8am Sunday right now.) Maybe not the fiqh portion... don't get me wrong, I think fiqh is interesting, but in comparison to Qur'an.......... everything else pales.

Well anyway. Ramadan Mubarak everyone...